Types of stories | Storytelling for nonprofits

- Hi, welcome to our series Storytelling for nonprofits. Did you know that as many as 56% of nonprofit followers take action, like making a donation, after seeing a compelling story from a nonprofit they follow on social media? This is one example of how powerful stories can be and this series is all about helping you craft great stories for your nonprofit. (upbeat music) I'm Arturo, a designer and educator at Canva and I've been working in the nonprofit sector for eight years. And throughout my

career I've helped many nonprofits and international organizations tell their stories. Now, great stories can help you do two things. They help you create impact by helping people understand your cause, get excited about it, and moving them to action. But stories can also be used to show impact. A good story helps you show the difference that your work makes in people's lives. It humanizes what you do and the people you do it for. And this series will empower you to turn your everyday work into

compelling stories that connect with your audience and help you create and demonstrate impact. And to help you put your learning into practice we've designed a workbook packed with exercises and learning materials. To access your copy, simply scan this QR code or click the link in the episode description. In this episode, we'll warm up our storytelling muscles by taking a look at the different types of stories you can tell. And secondly, we're gonna take a look at the formats your story can tak

e. Now there are essentially five types of stories: origin stories, community stories, impact stories, behind-the-scenes stories, and user-generated stories. Origin stories tell the story of why your nonprofit exists, how it came about. It's the big why behind your nonprofit. Then we have community stories. A community story humanizes the people you serve by showing a side of their lives that the audience may not know about. These stories can be a great way to challenge assumptions and stereotyp

es and bridge gaps between communities. Then we have impact stories. Impact stories are all about the change you've created. It shows how the world is a little bit better because of your work. Then we've got behind the scene stories. These stories capture the lived experience of your team, the faces and personalities that make your work possible, including your staff and your volunteers. And these stories are a great way to set your nonprofit apart from other nonprofits and show what it feels li

ke to be part of your team. And finally, we've got user-generated stories. These are stories created directly by your community, the people who follow and support you and have a strong connection with your nonprofit. So once you decide which type of story best suits your nonprofit, the next step is to think about what format is going to work best for your stories. Now, stories can be told in many different ways. We've got videos, blogs, photography, think social media for example, podcasts, or m

ultimedia, where you mix different types of formats together. And in this series we're going to focus particularly on storytelling through images and video. To do this, we've enlisted the help of some amazing storytellers who you'll meet in the next few episodes. Now that we know a little bit more about story types and formats, let's hear it from a nonprofit that uses stories every day to build bridges and make a positive change in the world. UNHCR is a refugee agency of the UN. That work is all

about saving lives and protecting the rights of refugees, internationally displaced people, and stateless people around the world. Now, with a refugee population of over 100 million people, telling good stories is crucial to moving beyond statistics and connect with the human experience of the people behind the numbers. So let's hear it from Chris, head of Global Communications at UNHCR. - UNHCR has a lot of data. We have biometric data from registering individual refugees in Jordan on up to gl

obal scale figures of, you know, the total number of forcibly displaced people in the world, which is at a record high. But in all of these numbers and all of this data there's one figure that that always stands out for me. And that's the number one. Through all of this, we're talking about people, we're talking about individuals. And so when we talk about data, we also want to talk about the people that that data represents. I took my title for this talk actually from a poem by a Polish poet. T

he main thing here is that the big numbers, people can't relate to them. And what they can relate to is one. If Polish poets don't do it for you, maybe Mother Teresa does. She also says, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. "But if I look at the one I will." If that's not your thing either, maybe a psychologist, Paul Slovich, who says, "The more who die the less we care." And what's interesting is that Slovich says that really psychic numbing begins as soon as you jump from one to two. So e

ven talking about two people, you've already made it harder for the reader or the viewer to relate to what's going on in your story. In a lot of our storytelling at UNHCR, we focus on the individual. We try to tell these individual stories as a way to bring people in to understand what's going on in different parts of the world. There's a lot that's standing in the way of us being able to get the public support to help refugees. So the question for us is how can we get people to step across that

gap, that empathy gap, and find a connection with refugees, find a connection with that issue. And so one way we do that is by telling individual stories. I mentioned before that we like to find someone who has survived a lot but has that drive, that spark, that resilience. And I think Esther really encapsulates that. She fled South Sudan as a child. She missed several years of school and yet she's star student, head of her class, wants to become the first neurosurgeon in South Sudan. By tellin

g her story it's a way to draw attention to those needs of education that can also help bring along all of her peers. This is Rafaai. He's a scientist and an engineer and wrote a textbook in Syria that was used at universities. He designed and built his own home and it was bombed in the conflict. And his wife, his daughter, and five other family members were killed. He and his surviving children fled to Turkey where he was not able to find work even though the university was teaching the textboo

k that he wrote. At the time, the resettlement issue was getting very politicized and we wanted to show, well who are these people who are in line for resettlement? Let's tell some of their stories. This one in particular, Rafaai was resettled to Michigan and invited to the State of the Union address by the White House. And this is Panaqiota. She is a Greek grandmother, 82 years old. She lives in Idomeni, Greece and would take refugees into her home and let them use her shower to take showers an

d feed them lunch, feed them dinner. We felt that her story really showed the welcomer, someone receiving refugees into their community with open arms, with an open heart, with an open door and looking at what's possible when that's our response instead of throwing up barriers. Yusra was a teenager who fled Syria. She was a competitive swimmer back in Syria. And so we followed her story. She wanted to be in the Olympics. At this point, it wasn't known whether or not there would be a refugee team

. There had never been a refugee Olympic team before. There was some talk of it, but we followed her story to find out what is it like to be an 18-year-old competitive swimmer who had hopes and then a conflict tears your country apart and now you've gotta start over and learn a new language and try to rebuild your dream. There was a refugee team created for the Olympics and Yusra did make the team. And here she is at the opening ceremony. Team Refugees really encapsulated the resilience of refug

ees. I mean, these are people who have left everything behind. They've been separated from their communities, often from family members, careers, educations, everything interrupted. Some of the runners on the team had never run with shoes before. And here they were able to go and be part of the Olympics. So Pur also fled South Sudan. He fled as a child and in fleeing was separated from his family. For, I think over a decade, has not known if his mother is alive. He doesn't know if she knows if h

e's alive. He doesn't know if she's alive. And his biggest hope with going to the Olympics was that maybe she'll see me. Maybe she'll see me and know that I'm alive. And for him, that meant more than anything. And she did not see him. But someone who knew her in South Sudan heard about the Olympics and saw something that the South Sudanese guy was running and recognized him. A phone call was arranged from South Sudan to Rio and he spoke with his mother for the first time since he had fled as a c

hild. That I think also shows you the power of these stories that even for the refugees telling their story and helping them have a chance to show what they've been through and to simply to show that they're alive can change their lives. - So stories can really be life changing and help us connect with other people in ways that data or numbers just can't do. And what you've heard are just a few examples of great stories from the nonprofit world. If you want more stories don't forget to explore p

art one of the series workbook. We've added more stories, which will hopefully inspire you and help you look at stories with new eyes. Simply scan this QR code or click the link in the episode description below to access your copy. So I hope this video gave you an overview of the different types and formats your story can take. Don't miss the next episode where we'll dive into the art of crafting a story and the science behind a compelling story. (gentle music)